


Hard Times

by rubyelf



Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-26
Updated: 2017-04-26
Packaged: 2018-10-24 02:46:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10732545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rubyelf/pseuds/rubyelf
Summary: Sometimes it's not you the train has come for...





	Hard Times

TITLE: Hard Times  
AUTHOR: rubyelf  
PROMPT: picture - old tires  
WORD COUNT: 500  
WARNINGS: none

 

She remembers the car, parked in the driveway in front of the house. She remembers running her fingers over the shining chrome curve of the bumper and then, horrified, wiping off her grimy fingerprints. She remembers the smell of the leather seats, deep and sweet, and the round knobs on the radio with the little red needle that slid across the dial. She remembers her brother leaning against his prize, one leg lazily crossed over the other, as the other boys wandered up the road to see if it was really true, and listening to them mutter to themselves as they walked away that it wasn't fair, that Richard had only gotten a car of his own because his grandpa died and his parents came into money and now they were spending it like there was no tomorrow.

She looks at the curve of the bumper, the chrome now a deep orange and crumbling beneath her touch, at the remnants of a door leaning against an old tree trunk, the smooth fabric panels long rotted away and the glass shattered. She kicks one of the tires, looks around at the others. Some of them belong to this car. Some belong to her father's, a big, square-nosed metal thing with burgandy bench seats and a trunk big enough for both of her sisters to hide in when they played. One belonged to the old tractor, the one her father had left in the woods behind the house when he bought the new one. The new one hadn't made it to the graveyard; the bank had taken it, along with everything else that had value. It had been too late for her brother's car, wrecked into a ditch on a rainy night soon after he got it and left to rust in the shade of the trees when there was no money left for repairs. Her father's car... they had taken it, but he'd taken the tires off and hidden them in the woods, saying he could sell them later. He never did, though. He never admitted the money was gone, not even to his children. She remembers him promising that he was leaving her a fortune, that she would live in a mansion and go to parties in beautiful dresses.

He died and left them nothing but debts, debts and farmland gone to weeds and saplings, and the graveyard of the shiny chrome and the proud smiles and the future,

She turns and looks over her shoulder as the silent train with the fire glowing in its engine rolls on through the forest behind her. It has not come for her; it is not her burden to ride it. She knows it has come to collect her father after yet another day spent wandering the memories of his mistakes. His sins are not hers, though, so she slips quietly off into the night and returns to where she came from.


End file.
